Nursing: Health Websites

General Health Websites

Healthfinder is a Web site from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. It provides an extensive searchable database of reliable online health publications, clearinghouses, Web sites, self-help groups, government agencies, academic centers, and nonprofit agencies.

Excellent collection of quality health sites compiled by the National Library of Medicine. In addition to sources on about 500 diseases and conditions, there are "lists of hospitals and physicians, a medical encyclopedia and dictionaries, health information in Spanish, extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs, health information from the media, and links to thousands of clinical trials." Patient education tutorials are also provided.

Other Quality Health Sites

All of the information within familydoctor.org has been written and reviewed by the physicians and patient education professionals at the American Academy of Family Physicians. The information is regularly reviewed and updated. The information at the site is organized by special groups (women, men, children, seniors), the body, and common conditions. It is also searchable.

The mission of Go Ask Alice! is to provide factual, in-depth, straight-forward, and nonjudgmental information to assist readers' decision-making about their physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Go Ask Alice! is supported by a team of Columbia University health educators and health care providers, along with information and research specialists from health-related organizations worldwide. The site provides weekly updates to the latest inquiries and responses, a search feature of the archi

This website from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is designed for individuals, including children and teens, and families, as well as practitioners, researchers, and educators. Information is available by health topics from A to Z or by body location or systems. A “Take a Quiz” box challenges viewers to test their knowledge with a series of constantly rotating true/false questions on hot topics such as diabetes.

Intelihealth is produced by Aetna US Healthcare and features Consumer Health Information from Harvard Medical School. The "Look it Up" section includes: drug resources, Symptom Scout, information on tests and procedures, physician and hospital locators, medical dictionary, and more. Subscribes to the HONcode principles.

Online resource site maintained by the College of Medicine, University of Iowa. Includes a collection of medical textbooks as well as extensive patient information.

Criteria for Evaluating Web Resources

Web users are encouraged to employ a healthy skepticism when visiting any site and to use criteria, such as those below, to gather evidence on the quality of the information in the Web site.

[Click here for a Website evaluation form--in PDF or Microsoft Word or RTF format--designed to be used in conjunction with these criteria. Faculty are invited to use this form in their classes when making an assignment of this type.]

Web Search Engine for Health Sites

MedHunt is a search engine provided by the Health On the Net (HON) Foundation. It provides for searching of the Internet using a robot designed to select only sites that are relevant to the health and medical fields, as well as the HON database for medical sites, for hospitals, and support groups conforming to the HON Code of Conduct for health Internet sites.